# How has adult life expectancy changed over time? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 12, 2014, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937 "2014-07-12T17:17:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937/1 "2014-07-12T17:17:49Z")
Most figures of life expectancy include infant and child mortality. That says little about how long an adult can expect to live. How has that number changed over the years? From how long back do we have reasonable data? ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937/2 "2014-07-12T17:40:17Z")
I think you will find what you want here: [Life Tables](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Body.html) ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937/3 "2014-07-12T17:49:26Z")
Life expectancy numbers include infant mortality, which significantly affects them. I’ve always thought it screwed up the metric. A better question is “if you survive childhood, how old can you expect to live on average?” and I’m wondering if there’s a seperate metric for that. Most of the gain in life expectancy we’ve seen over the last few hundred years has been a reduction in infant mortality. Would someone who survived into adolescence 500 years ago expect to live to be 60? 70? ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937/4 "2014-07-12T18:02:36Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > I think you will find what you want here: [Life Tables](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Body.html) Thanks. If I understand correctly, I need to look at table 6 column 7(e\x)? That series runs from 1900 onwards and is restricted to the US, but yes, that is the kind of thing I was looking for. I’m also curious to know if we have useful data before that time period and for other countries. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937/5 "2014-07-12T18:05:01Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Life expectancy numbers include infant mortality, which significantly affects them. I’ve always thought it screwed up the metric. A better question is “if you survive childhood, how old can you expect to live on average?” and I’m wondering if there’s a seperate metric for that. Most of the gain in life expectancy we’ve seen over the last few hundred years has been a reduction in infant mortality. > > Would someone who survived into adolescence 500 years ago expect to live to be 60? 70? Thank you for restating my OP. I thought it was clear enough, but apparently I was wrong. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937/6 "2014-07-12T18:06:06Z")
I was specifically wondering if there was a term/data collection for some sort of “if you survive childhood, this would be your life expectancy” metric. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937/7 "2014-07-12T18:06:38Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > **Life expectancy numbers include infant mortality, which significantly affects them. I’ve always thought it screwed up the metric.** A better question is “if you survive childhood, how old can you expect to live on average?” and I’m wondering if there’s a seperate metric for that. Most of the gain in life expectancy we’ve seen over the last few hundred years has been a reduction in infant mortality. Off-topic, but only slightly I think: A similar metric that I think is similarly screwed up is the oft-quoted statistic about (older) people who live alone having a shortened life expectancy, compared to (older) people who don’t live alone. In the contexts that I’ve always seen this, there always seems to be an implication that this results from lonliness -\> depression -\> poorer health and poor practices in taking care of oneself. The shortened life expectancy is in the range of (IIRC) just a small number of years on the average. I think the metric is screwed up by the fact that (typically older) people ALL have an elevated risk of having a _sudden and catastrophic_ incident, like a heart attack or stroke or fall. Such events are often quite survivable if one has a spouse or adult child or other such live-in person in the house, but are often quite fatal, and suddenly so, for people who live alone. So each person who dies suddenly at any age from, say, 50 to 80 _might_ have lived who-knows how much longer if it weren’t for living alone. I think that screws up that metric. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937/8 "2014-07-12T18:09:32Z")
I remember seeing charts that keyed life expectancy to age: if you are _X_ years old, you can expect, on average, to live _Y_ more years. They are not all that hard to find, but they typically do not go back very far in time. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937/9 "2014-07-12T18:10:06Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > I was specifically wondering if there was a term/data collection for some sort of “if you survive childhood, this would be your life expectancy” metric. I hereby coin “adult life expectancy”! Too cumbersome? Damn. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-adult-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/692937/10 "2014-07-12T18:15:06Z")
There’s some (very limited) information in the Wikipedia article on [Life Expectancy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age-adjusted_life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time): > [@](#): > > Having survived until the age of 21, a male member of the English aristocracy in this period could expect to live: > 1200–1300: to age 64 > 1300–1400: to age 45 (due to the impact of the bubonic plague) > 1400–1500: to age 69 > 1500–1550: to age 71